Coop was there next to me, all at once in my line of vision as she knelt in front of me. “You were furiously sketching again, Trixie. Look.” She tapped the pad with a fingernail.
As I looked down, afraid of what I might see, I took a deep breath. If nothing else, this type of possession was much less difficult on my body. I didn’t feel nearly as achy or tense as I did when I became violent.
Then I looked closer at the picture—and I could barely contain my shock. “Is that Detective Crabby Patty?” I squealed.
“It sure is,” Jeff confirmed, wagging his tail. “You were wicked mad when you were drawin’ him, too, Trix. Yelling and carrying on like you were some kind of demented Davinci. Is this some new development you guys forgot to tell me about? I knew about the demon possession, but nobody warned me about this.”
“Did I frighten you, Jeff?” I asked as I reached out a hand to scratch his wiry ears.
He leaned into me, rubbing the side of his head into my palm. “You’d frighten Satan himself, Trix. What’s going on?”
“Suffice it to say, Trixie’s come upon a new facet to her possession,” Coop said, lifting from her knees to sit on the large square coffee table in front of the couch.
Shaking off my latest bout with Artur, I tried not to panic and instead focus on what I’d drawn. “Why would I draw a picture of Detective Griswald?”
And it was very clearly him, from the wide, toothy grin with shades of coffee stains to his balding head and brown trench coat.
Coop eyeballed me, her mouth a thin line of grim. “I don’t have the answer to that, Trixie. But you were screaming his name at the top of your lungs as you scribbled. It must mean something.”
I rolled my head on my neck, stretching my muscles and shaking out my hand. “Yeah…” I murmured. “It must mean something. Do you think it’s related to Dr. Mickey’s murder and Griffin’s disappearance?”
Livingston hopped to the coffee table and perched himself by a set of rustic candleholders, spreading his wings to stretch them out. “Well, this Detective Griswald is certainly involved in both, dumplin’. He was on the scene when Dr. Mickey was murdered, and with Tansy Primrose when they questioned Solomon. Maybe, after the way he spoke to you and Solomon, ya decided he needed to be immortalized.”
“Right,” I agreed, flexing my toes. “Maybe Artur is just toying with me? You did say he likes to see people hurt. Obviously, he saw the way the detective treated me. Maybe this is like his big ‘take that’?”
“Maybe,” Coop conceded with a sharp nod. “Or maybe it’s a clue like the last time. You drew a gorilla with Dr. Mickey, and then a gorilla took Griffin. I don’t see how Detective Griswald fits into that unless he came to the party dressed as a gorilla while he was on duty which seems a little bit of a stretch because I reiterate, he was on duty, but we can’t rule that out.”
As I stared at the sketch, wondering how I’d shaded something so quickly when I’d always had trouble with that particular technique, I saw the building behind Detective Griswald.
“What do you suppose that building behind him is about?”
It was looming in the background with multiple windows and a sign on top, but I’d only sketched the letters PAC, and then the rest was a scribbled mess. I’m assuming that’s when I was torn from my wrestling match with my demon and didn’t have the chance to finish.
“Not a clue, lass. Looks like an official building though, eh?”
I gave a slow nod. “Yeah, it does, but it doesn’t look like the Cobbler Cove Police Station. Maybe it’s part of the name of the station he transferred from in California?”
“Could be, lass. It’s easy enough to look up, yeah? His credentials must be listed somewhere online right next to ‘misogynistic butthole.’”
I barked a laugh and ran my palm over Livingston’s head. “You didn’t by chance hear anything today at the shop, did you? You’ve been keeping an ear out, right?”
“I have indeed, but nay, lovely girl. Not a peep.”
This drawing, like the other, could be crucial, and I couldn’t very well share it with Higgs to get input, could I? This part of my life, this secret part, was becoming very frustrating.
“Trixie?” Coop said, patting my leg. “We must speak about the demon before everyone else arrives.”
Jeff flipped over onto his back and scratched it against the couch in excitement. “Are we gonna tell scary stories? Oo-oo! I have one!”
“Oh, bugger off, canine!” Livingston squawked, flapping his wings. “The last time we did scary ghost stories ya hid under the coffee table.”
Coop sighed, and it was certainly tinged with irritation, but she stroked the top of his head and frowned. “No, Jeff. No scary stories tonight. We don’t have time before Knuckles and Higgs arrive so we can cook dinner.”
“So what’s up, Coop?” I asked, even if I was afraid of what was up. She’d been researching exorcisms and demons and all manner of hellish entities, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear what she’d found.
“As you know, I’ve been researching demons and how to rid oneself of them, and we have a problem.”
As if there wasn’t always a problem? So what else was new? Leaning back against the couch, I nestled into the pillows and closed my eyes. “Go on, tell me. I’m ready. What’s the problem?”
I heard her lean forward, and then I felt her use two fingers to pry my eyes open. “If we exorcise your demon, we risk the chance it will get loose and infiltrate someone else, or in general go rogue and create mass havoc.”
I swatted at her hands and made a face. “So what you’re saying is we’re novices, and if we try to get rid of this demon on our own, we could end up making things much worse.”
“According to what I’ve read, apocalyptic worse. Thus, it must be contained, and I don’t know how to do that yet, but don’t worry. I’ll figure it out.”
My cheeks burned with anger. “Hear that, Artur?” I yelled up at the ceiling, making Jeff and Livingston jump. “You get to hang around for a little while longer. But as sure as I sit here, I’m going to find out how to rid myself of you!”
“Who’s Artur?” Knuckles asked as he pushed his way in through the French doors connected to our dining room, plates in his hand. “Did you finally take my advice and start dating, Trixie girl, and now you can’t get rid of the line of boys outside your door?”
“Trixie’s dating someone?” I heard Higgs call from behind him.
I popped up off the couch, grabbing the sketch as I did and tearing it from my pad to fold it into a small square and tuck it in the pocket of my overalls.
I stuck my tongue out at them and made a face. “I’m neither dating nor lining boys up outside my door, thank you very much. Now let’s get to cooking because I’m starving. What’s on the menu tonight, Knuckles?”
He grinned at me, his graying hair dotted with raindrops. “You are not cooking, and tonight is chicken Kiev with a delicate but creamy Parmesan risotto and the last of my fresh tomatoes from the garden.”
My stomach growled despite my worries about Griffin and exorcising demons. “Sounds wonderful. How can I help?”
Knuckles set the dishes and a bag of ingredients down on the small island in our kitchen and shook a finger at me. “You can’t. You can, however, make a murder board or whatever it is you do when you’re knee-deep in a crime. Leave the kitchen to me so we still have a kitchen when we’re through.”
Higgs covered his mouth with his wrist to keep from laughing out loud, but I poked him in the ribs as his eyes twinkled, and asked, “Anything new from Solomon?”
Instantly, he sobered. “Nothing, and my staff went out and looked everywhere again early this evening in case they’d missed something. They talked to the bunch under the Hawthorne and still came up with nothing—no one saw anything. Everyone was either asleep or, unfortunately, passed out.”
As upset as I was about the blood found on Griffin’s backpack, I still couldn’t seem to make my motor run enough to
start looking for him at his familiar haunts. I think I was afraid of what I might find, and it immobilized me. I’m not proud of that, but there it is.
Yet, Higgs had assured me I didn’t have to because he was already on it, and his staff had been searching the entire time we’d spent with Nissa.
My stomach clenched again out of fear and worry. I had to keep busy or I’d never be able to function thinking about Griffin in the cold and rain.
I reached out and gripped his hand, maybe more to steady myself than anything else, my throat tight. “We can’t give up, Higgs. We can’t.”
Higgs looked down at me, his eyes capturing mine and holding them in an intense gaze before he said, “Not a chance. Not a chance.”
* * * *
Rubbing my eyes with the heels of my hands, I tried to shake off the sleepies as I looked at what we had so far, which wasn’t much.
We’d settled at the dining room table after a delicious dinner, with steaming cups of hazelnut coffee and laptops, to try to hash this out. Jeff sat at Higgs’s feet, snoozing, and Livingston sat on the back of Knuckles’s chair while the rest of us pondered and threw out theories, no matter how silly they sounded.
I sat up on my haunches and tucked a leg beneath me. “So here’s where we are right now. As it stands, Dr. Mickey didn’t have any enemies, unless Nissa’s husband Felix found out about their affair and, rather than confront them, exacted his revenge dressed as a gorilla.”
That was one of our theories, which made perfect sense until you threw in Griffin’s disappearance. Then it all rather fell apart, and Coop said as much.
“Yes, Trixie Lavender, but if Felix did kill Dr. Mickey, why would he take Griffin? He probably doesn’t even know Griffin exists.”
“Maybe he was throwing suspicion off himself by kidnapping a random person he saw at the party?” Knuckles suggested.
“Was he even at the party?” I asked. “We don’t have any video to say one way or the other—which is fishy, too, by the way. Someone went with the intent to kill Dr. Mickey, that much is for sure. I just can’t figure out why, if it wasn’t Felix.”
“So why can’t Felix be a suspect?” Knuckles asked again, perching his chin on his fist.
“Well, he can. But keep in mind, no one ever suspected him to begin with—not that we know of, anyway. The police were still working under the assumption the affair never happened. They knew nothing of it until this afternoon, when I texted Tansy to tell her what I’d found at Dr. Mickey’s. So there was no suspicion to throw. Also, for all we know, he could alibi out. If Nissa was out of town at her sister’s, and I believe that’s been confirmed, he was probably with their children that early in the morning. Unless he snuck out. Nissa’s kids are teenagers…”
“That’s definitely something to check into.” Higgs paused a moment before he looked at me. “So you did tattle on yourself, eh?” he asked, taking a sip of his coffee and crossing his ankles.
“I did. I said I would, and if nothing else, I’m good for my word. I broke into Dr. Mickey’s apartment and poked around. There’s no getting around that.”
Higgs gave me a sheepish look. “I confessed, too. I know you said you’d keep me out of it, but I couldn’t let you take the fall. I’m just as guilty.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “You shouldn’t have done that, Higgs! You have way more at stake than I do. People depend on you at the shelter. No one has to have a tattoo.”
“And that’s exactly what I thought you’d say, and precisely why I didn’t tell you I was going to do it.”
I looked around surreptitiously and winked. “Well, they haven’t come to take us away yet. So I guess for now we’re safe. Either way, thanks for having my back.”
He smiled at me, the smile that makes my heart bounce in my chest. “Always.”
Looking down at my coffee, I tried not to squirm as I considered something else. “You know, we still don’t know what was used to kill Dr. Mickey. What did the killer use to puncture his skull, and why did he choose that particular method of murder?”
As the rain beat down on the roof of our cozy house, there was a moment of silence.
Knuckles rose to go to the kitchen, opening the fridge to pull out whatever delicacy he had in there for dessert. “Well, the police aren’t telling anyone anything, I can tell you that. Watched the five o’clock news while the cake was baking and they’re still callin’ it a homicide, but no new details to report at this time,” he repeated in news anchor fashion.
I blew my hair from my eyes. “So all we know is what we heard from that guy Pickles and Detective Nasty Pants, which was the murder weapon was something small and sharp. There are lots of small sharp things in the world.”
“Right,” Higgs agreed. “So that brings us back to Nadia and Amber.”
Knuckles carried out plates of fluffy angel food cake with a homemade pumpkin spice whipped cream topping and placed them in front of each of us.
“Nadia and Amber are innocent, for sure,” I commented as I drove my fork into the cake with delight, scooping up a bite.
Higgs tapped the table with his finger. “And you know that how?”
“My gut,” I said around my mouthful of cake. “I’ve been fooled once before by someone who asked for my help and turned out to by a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Not happening again.”
Knuckles looked down at his cake, making me realize I’d put my foot in my mouth. That woman Suzanne had scarred us all for life, and I was still angry about it.
I dropped my fork and hopped up from my chair to put my arms around his big neck and hug him hard, clenching my eyes tight to thwart an onslaught of tears.
“I’m sorry, Knuckles. That was so insensitive of me. Sometimes, I forget…”
He patted my arm. “We can’t walk on eggshells forever, Trixie girl. It is what it is. The sting will pass.”
I dropped a kiss on his cheek and took my seat again. “So, we’re sort of suspect-less at this point. Not that we’ve had that many to begin with. No one seems to know anything, even if that’s technically impossible, because it’s no coincidence that a gorilla was involved in both instances. I just can’t connect the dots, but there have to be dots. There have to be.”
Higgs’s phone rang, and he excused himself from the table to take the call while I piddled around on the Internet, jumping back and forth between the Cobbler Cove PD page and our community page.
As I scrolled, I came across some condolences for Dr. Mickey and began to read them. Sometimes killers took pleasure in the cat and mouse of it all. Maybe the killer had posted on the page as a way to taunt the community, and he was right under our noses, but I didn’t find much of interest other than a candlelight vigil in Dr. Mickey’s honor set for tomorrow.
While Higgs bobbed his head up and down and paced in the living room on the phone, everyone else ate their cake and I scooted back over to the Cobbler Cove PD page.
Whoever had put the page together had done a nice job of personalizing each officer and detective by sharing a bit about them under their pictures. In today’s climate, they could use all the relatable content they could get.
I smiled when I saw Tansy’s and learned she’d come to America when she was ten, after her British-born mother had married her American born stepfather. I’d always wondered what had brought her here—question now answered.
When I saw Oz’s picture, his handsome face smiling and bright, I read the small paragraph below his picture to find out he loved to square dance—which I found curious and fascinating, and it explained why he was such a good dancer.
And then, unfortunately, the unavoidable—I came across Detective Griswald’s picture and bio. Born in California, he was dubbed the CCPD’s “newest addition,” who hailed from Sacramento and had originally attended college to become a defense attorney, but after doing a ride-along with his local police department as part of a class, had found law enforcement suited him better.
I scoffed. Right. More likely, he’d discove
red he was better suited for calling people names and knocking them around for sport.
Yet, as I enlarged the picture of him, I gasped out loud.
I’d drawn this exact picture of him, with the building behind him and everything.
What in blazes was going on?
Enlarging the picture further, I was able to read the continuation of the letters I’d never finished on the building I’d never finished drawing. PACKSON.
Huh. Packson. The name meant nothing to me, but I typed it into Google anyway to find it was once a distillery and was now privately owned.
I guess it didn’t mean anything. Detective Grouchy had probably been out beating up the homeless when they’d happened to snap this candid shot of him, and I was looking for dragons where there were none because I was sour on him at the moment.
“Okay, Tansy. Thanks for the head’s up,” Higgs said as he traipsed back into the dining room.
Our eyes all rose expectantly to find Higgs’s face was pale, his eyes wide as he stood at the edge of the dining room. He looked like he was in shock.
I rose from my seat and went to stand in front of him. “Higgs? What’s wrong?”
He swallowed hard before he answered. “It’s Lazlo…”
“What about him?” Coop asked as she, too, rose from her chair, her head cocked.
“They found him—or he found us, is more like it. He’s in the hospital. They don’t know if he’s going to make it.”
Chapter 16
I paced the length of the floor at the hospital, taking occasional glimpses at Lazlo, who lay immobile in an ER bed, hooked up to a hundred different wires and machines that incessantly, annoyingly beeped.
The sterile smell, the distant whoosh of the ER doors, the miles of white and green, all lent to the hopelessness I’d been feeling since we’d arrived.
Death lived here, it slept in beds here, it decided who would enter and who wouldn’t leave…and it had me in its grip, a grip filled with worry and fear.
Cal, who’d been the one to find Lazlo on the doorstep of the shelter as he was leaving for the night, leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes, crossing his arms over his chest and hooking his ankles together.
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